Saturday, 27 February 2010

Update: This blog post on the female euroblogosphere has been taken up by EuroparlTV.In the German blogosphere, we have recently seen a controversial debate (started by annalist) about the question why only men were among the so-called "alpha bloggers" in a video series about important bloggers, a debate that has led to the inclusion of female bloggers in the third part of the series (see the comment of the feminist blog Maedchenmannschaft).

It is much easier to find brilliant women in the political Euroblogosphere, a blogosphere that is still developing but that has definitely left its infancy over the past year. Female bloggers are an integral part of this blogosphere, and here I'd like to present 20 of them.

Inside the institutions, Cecilia Malmström has taken the place of Margot Wallström as the blogging Commissioner. And in the London representation of the Commission, public relations official Antonia Mochan is Talking about the EU. Another EU official, Halmai Katalin who is a press officer at the European Parliament, is blogging in Hungarian at Európában. And even within the member states, civil servants like Jo from Bitmorecomplicate have an eye on Europe.

Surprisingly, there are not so many good MEP and Europarty blogs, and even fewer written written by women. One of the few female MEPs blogging regularly is socialist MEP Corina Cretu. There are some more, but most are not very regular and with strong tendencies towards press release-like texts. But with political activist Eurosocialiste (who writes in English and French) there is a clearly affiliated woman who has shown the way and set standards since the European Parliament election campaign.

Another group of female bloggers are the journalist bloggers and bloggers on journalistic platforms. There are decorated Spanish euroblogger Macarena Ruiz Garcia from La Oreja de Europa, Honor Mahony who is looking Behind the Scenes at the news platform EUobserver or Romanian journalist Anne-Marie Blajan with her frequent and insightful posts at Menaru. In that category, we also shouldn't forget French blogger Prune of L'Europe en Blogs whose laconic comments on European politics and the euroblogosphere are among the best you can get. And you also don't want to miss out the two Danish voices from Rikke Brøndum and Anne Albinus.

Then there is another gang of professionals in the Brussels arena that is worth mentioning - the public affairs consultants, lobbyists and PR professionals. Lobbyist Caroline De Cock is the blue rhino making us laugh and think at the Lobbyplanet. Public Affairs consultant Kattebel just started her blog after realising that Twitter is not enough to say everything that needs to be said. Social media consultant Antonella Napolitano writing in Italian at Vassar Storie(s) and has recently joined the PDF Europe team. And scientific consultant Eva Peña is Eva en Europa, contributing with well-thought posts to the debates in the euroblogosphere.

And last but not least there is the academia. There are the students Alex Athanasopoulou of Europeanization and the very active Mia Välimäki of Cosmetic Uprise. European Law expert Magdalena Tulibacka of ECJ Watch shines with analyses of judgements of the European Court of Justice. And hopefully the newly started blog European Polis by EU affairs scholar Stefanie Sifft who has already contributed on the European Citizen Initiative on the most important German blog netzpolitik.org will continue euroblogging and become part of the family from now on.

I suppose I have forgotten some of the female bloggers. (Sorry!!) I suppose I don't even know some of those existing. There are also a number of women contributing on multi-author blogs that are not listed here. But all this only proves the point that a video series on important eurobloggers could not ignore those women who run the EU.

And to be honest: I wouldn't want to miss them. Because they are great, impressive, and fascinating. If they were the only eurobloggers, the euroblogosphere would still be a great place to be - and so I thank you for blogging!

PS.: When I saw Linda's comment, I knew I had missed one of the longest running euroblogs written by a women - EU for US. Since I am sure I have missed several others, don't hesitate to add them in the comments, that would be a good opportunity to get a more comprehensive list than the 20 I had assembled in the initial post.

Update (22 April): In the meantime, there are more must-read euroblogs written by women, like the political science blog by Jaanika Erne or the blog by written by EU Commissioner Georgieva.

Thanks for the mention and the kind words Julien :)It's a shame I haven't had much time to blog lately... too much work. But this post clearly gives me motivation to go on!I'm happy to see more and more women blog on EU affairs, because although seen like this there are quite many of us, there is still many more male Eurobloggers! The good consequence of it is that female Eurobloggers are very solidar and supportive with each other.